Square Enix Teases Finally Bringing Dragon Quest X Stateside

Dragon Quest X. Image courtesy Square Enix

Square Enix is back to making money, and it might just spend it. The game publisher said Monday that its profits for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2014 total 6.6 billion yen (about $65 million), and raised the possibility of moving its massively multiplayer Dragon Quest X out of Japan.

Square Enix had a rough fiscal 2013. The company took an “extraordinary loss” for the period ending March 31, 2013. What it presumed would be modest profits became severe losses of 13.7 billion yen, about $135 million at the time. Restructuring efforts to course-correct were estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars. Square Enix president and CEO Yoichi Wada, who had been with the company since 2000, resigned. The house that Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts built was in disarray.

To what games did the company credit the turnaround? Major console releases Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD, Thief, Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition had “favorable” sales, it said, adding that the Japan-based PC browser game Sengoku IXA is performing steadily, and its smartphone (and now PlayStation Vita) game Kaku-San-Sei Million Arthur has been “instant hit” in Taiwan and China.

It also says the smartphone roleplaying game Dragon Quest Monsters Super Light, which debuted in January for iOS and Android mobiles, is off to an “encouraging start.”

And Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, Square Enix’s relaunch of its disastrous 2010 MMO followup to Final Fantasy XI? The company says both sales and operations have been “making favorable progress,” which is essentially the same verbiage it used back in February, when it issued a progress update for its prior three quarters. Indeed, most of today’s report simply puts paid to what the company predicted for the close of its fiscal 2014 a few months ago.

Square Enix also attributes its financial turnaround to increased focus on smart devices and mobile content, as well as its expansion into mainland China — it notes Final Fantasy XIV will launch there this summer.

It’s also eyeing the greater Asian market for Dragon Quest X. The MMO version of the classic Japanese RPG began its life on Wii in 2012, then moved to Wii U, PCs and most recently Android devices. But only in Japan. Will we see it here? Square Enix is noncommittal at the moment, only saying that it is “considering” moving the game out of Japan, and even then won’t say what territories it’s looking at.